Article by
Barbados Today

Published on
October 5, 2016

On Sunday night Norma Cox had an eerie feeling and could not sleep. She had a gut feeling that something was wrong.

Norma Cox

Her worst fears were realized Tuesday evening when she got the news that her youngest child, David Harewood, was dead and was asked to come to identify his body.

The body of Harewood, who police said was 39-years-old, but whose family members said he was 36, was discovered motionless on the roadway at the corner of George Street and Belmont Road, St Michael around 2:10 a.m. Monday by a police mobile unit.

David Harewood

Cox said she was still in shock and trying to come to terms with the fact that her son was gone, even though she and her son Mark went with police to identify David’s body yesterday.

“I saw him and I just touched him, all his head,” she said before exclaiming, “Lord have mercy” and giving her own theory as to how he met his death.

“It’s no one person that do this to him. It isn’t a one body that do it. About three or four persons would have to do this to him. All his face [was] swollen. The eye even out. My son [is] in a state,” an emotional Cox said.

The mother of nine, including six girls and three boys, said though she did not see David very often, she never thought he would be the victim of such a violent crime.

“On Sunday night I was in my bed and my niece asked me why I couldn’t sleep. I told her I could hear someone saying, ‘mum, mum, mum’ but I didn’t know who was hollering for me. Usually when I hear of an accident or someone get shoot I would always wonder if it was David. Then a couple days would pass and I would see him and I would say, ‘good it’s not David’. But this one is something that shock me. They should not kill him like that,” the distraught mother said.

She described Harewood as “a quiet person” who was “sometimes very hasty”.

“I don’t know what else to say.He wasn’t a bad boy,” the mother told Barbados TODAY addingthatthe last time she saw him was on Sunday evening when he visited her.

“He comes and look for me every Sunday and he leave here and told me he’s going to the Cancer Walk. I haven’t seen him since. The last words he said to me was, ‘mum I going down here to this walk’”, she said.

Cox said the only thing she had to remember him by was the puppy he left with her just two weeks ago.

“Two weeks ago he bring a puppy there for me, it name Timon. And he told me care the puppy for him.It’s out there in the yard,” she said, still in a state of shock.

David’s cousin, Myhaisha Cox, described him as ‘a good boy who had his ways’.

“You would see David once in a blue moon. He always on the move. He was that kind of person. I would always make jokes with him. He was cool. Everybody have their ways but that didn’t have to happen to him. It’s just a shock to hear that he is dead. He was here just Sunday with us,” she said.

The deceased, of no fixed place of abode, was never married and had no children.

Police said a number of people were assisting with investigations into his death.